Eyebrows McGee is a young woman living in the emotional heartland of America: Peoria, that infamous bellwether constantly cited by the clueless culturati, as in, "But will it play in Peoria?" Eyebrows gives you a ground-level view of what's actually playing in Peoria.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Mom McGee Has Vermin Trauma and Needs Sympathy

Writes Eyebrows's mom:

"I thought Sam was the good cat. She was pacing on my bed at 4:30 this morning and I jerked the sheet to get her attention and perhaps get her off the bed. Instead she growled at me which is unusual. I turned on the light and Sam looked at me with her dead mouse in her mouth. Needless to say my night was ruined -- does anyone hear the mother scream when both men in the house are gone. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

My mother is really irrationally bothered by mice for someone who lives in the midwest, and my dad was stranded in Milan because his flight was meant to go through Heathrow on the way back to O'Hare and the terrorists were all busy making gel-related threats, leaving my mother to cope with the rodentia alone. So give Eyebrows's mom sympathy. She needs it after the vermin trauma.

After living a boring suburban life, we moved to a rural area north of Peoria. Our cats were essential to the household as good mousers. On the occasion one or two slipped into our house alive, a cat always caught it and IMMEDIATLY wanted to go outside to finish him off. So tell your mother, all she has to do is let the cat outside and she will be fine. Actually, the cat saved her from having to catch the mouse.. a much messier ordeal.

Things could be worse. There are cats who catch the mouse outside and then want to bring it inside. It seems to be their way of "bringing home the bacon". But the worst of all are those cats who want to bring in a mouse that is not dead yet and play with it for awhile.

My mother's OTHER cat, Riley-the-evil-one, likes to bring up mice to play with them upstairs before doing them in. Often leaving them alive and terrified in closets for unsuspecting humans to discover.

My mom thinks I was terribly mean to her in this post, but I was trying to explain why she's more traumatized by mice than the average Midwesterner. She's not a Midwesterner by birth and she's never gotten used to sharing the prairie with rodentia.